Nota means "note" in Portugeuse. Nota Bene (Latin) indicates that special attention should be paid to something. Both are appropriate in describing a feed, or a portion of pretty much any data. Since several people have been concerned with making sure this format is not specifically used to replace RSS, Nota could mean Not A feed, or Not Another feed, or pretty much Not Anything. For those who like acronyms, Nota could stand for None Of The Above, especially relevant here.

Nota is also very close to Atom spelled backwards. Mota, the actual backwards spelling of Atom, perhaps should be considered as an alternate if you don't like Nota (I haven't checked the legal status of Mota). It also evokes thoughts of "mote", which is typically defined as a small particle, again a rather relevant name.

Bad Points

NOT Another syndication format (Nota can be used negatively quite easily) [DeveloperDude]

Misc. Points

"Nota" is used as the translation for entries, articles etc in Spanish and possibly Portuguese. A "Nota Feed" is then an "Entry feed". While this is a nice link, could it maybe cause confusion by using a very generic, related word. (Would we consider the name "Entry"?)

URLs

nota.com/org/net taken (or at least registered).

purl.org/nota seems to be available.

Taglines

My site is Notable.

I've been Notarized (might be some issues with this to avoid legal confusion with Notary Publics).

Discuss

[AsbjornUlsberg] I think Nota has issues with pronouncation. I also think it's a bit too staccato.

[MartinAtkins] Since I studied some Spanish my brain tells me this should be vauguely like 'Naught-a'. I suspect an American might try to pronounce it with the 'aaah'-type O sound as in the American pronounciation of 'pop', and since they tend to tap their Ts, it would sound like 'nada', which is 'nothing' in Spanish. Meanwhile, Brits without exposure to Spanish are likely to go for 'Not-a' or 'Note-a' (British pronounciation of both, again). I'm rusty on IPA, and I don't really know how to express IPA in ASCII anyway, so hopefully you can understand what I'm rambling about!

Summarised and included above.

[MartinAtkins] Rather than simply deleting my objection, it would be far better to actually refute it. It would be nice if someone could actually tell me why the "nota" vs. "nada" confusion does not exist, because as from my point of view (as an English speaker from England) it does. Perhaps there's a subtlety in the tapped T that is not in D that I do not appreciate? How do you pronounce "Nota"?

[MichaelGlaesemann] If taglines and icons such as those suggested above are used, English pronunciation becomes a nonissue. Notable, notarized, and notation all are pronounced with a long o, rather than the short o of not.

[SingingBanzo] I deleted your comment, sorry if I didn't make it clear: Don't worry about Spanish, "nota" is a common word, as easy to confuse with "nada" as you can confuse "note" and "map". I'm a Spanish speaker and I pronounce "nota" as "nota", and "nada" as "nada", I don't need to clarify any more. Hope you believe me =)

[TomasJogin] Uh, not everybody are Spanish though. If I read him correctly, he noted that "Nota", when pronunced in American English (not Spanish), may sound like "Nada".

[SingingBanzo] So what? If you are an English speaker, "nada" doesn't mean anything negative to you (or it does?). If you are a Spanish speaker, "nota" WILL NOT be confused with "nada" (I can assure that). So, the problem we are addressing here is a Spanish speaker hearing an English speaker out of context? Come on.

[TomasJogin] You don't have to be a born and bred Mexican or Spanish to know what "nada" means. However, I've never really claimed that there was anything negative about any of this, just clarifying that Martin was talking about Americans, not Spanish people.

[MartinAtkins] Well, okay. Ignoring the fact that 'nada' has any significance to anyone, it's still another pronounciation and thus pronounciation confusion. However, I guess Americans talking to Americans can pick out the subtle difference between 'd' and a tapped t sound much better than I can, as a British English speaker. I would probably interpret 'n-ar-da' (as it's spelt in my accent) as 'nada' rather than 'nota'. (I did try to throw in a bit of IPA, but either the wiki doesn't support Unicode or I did something wacky.) I suppose we can care about Americans confusing Brits about as much as you're proposing we worry about Americans confusing Spanish-speakers, though.

[SingingBanzo] Don't worry about Spanish, "nota" means "note" and even it's a word used to traslate "post". "Una nota en el diario" is "An article in the newspaper".

I was more worried about the negative connotation in English "nota? not-a-what?"

[DaveWarnock] Blogged "Nota looks like the best name option I have seen in a long time for echo/necho/atom. It has meaning, it has a joke factor, it is short, it can be an acronym and yet is a word, it appears to be legally Ok. Go for it."

[MartinAtkins] If someone told me "This site is notable", I'd probably say "why?". Are we supposed to put some wacky emphasis on "Nota" so that we can tell the difference between "This site is notable" and "This site is NOTAble"? Also, the confusion of "Note-a" vs. "Not-a" will still exist... but then, we already have that listed as a bad point.

[jayseae] It seems to me that most any indication of a feed is not going to be clear to some subset of the population. How many knew what those little orange (RSS, XML) and blue buttons (RDF) meant the first time they saw them? What's that Feedcast button mean? This site is Jazzed? I've been Zinged (a name which I like)? None of these are immediately clear what they indicate if you're not famliar. If that's a new guideline, we might want to start over (again). Also added some more icons with more variations.

[MartinAtkins] I don't really see the value in the "cute" puns to do with these names. NOTArized, NOTAble and so on are just going to confuse people. Sure, people might not know what "Nota Feed" means, but at least they'll know it's a term they don't know right off the bat, rather than thinking they heard the word "notable". With "Is your site notable?" vs. "Does your site have a Nota Feed?" I think it's quite clear that people are less likely to be confused by the second, and I don't really think anyone could actually say the first and keep a straight face.

[TomasJogin] I agree. Sure, it's cute, or corny. But people will use "syndicate", not "notarize"; and so on and so forth.

[jayseae] Absolutely. Cute and/or corny ideas are just that - ideas. "I have a Nota Feed" doesn't make for a very interesting icon (or particuarly good English). On the other hand, NOTA by itself doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility (new icons above). I wouldn't think it unlikely that someone use NOTAble - though it might be to describe someone else's feed - saying that you find it NOTAble. NOTArized, NOTAsyn and NOTAtions are probably all over the top, but it doesn't hurt to have a little fun, does it? I think a name with version number (NOTA/0.2), name with feed (NOTA/FEED) or name with valid (NOTA/VALID) would be used by people. In any case, if it's agreed that very few people are likely to use the term as a verb, no matter what the name, can't we just accept that the taglines don't really matter, enjoy the levity and move on?

[MartinAtkins] Sure, if everyone is happy that they're just for our amusement on the wiki, and not part of some massive quirky "marketing campaign" then I've no problem. I like the new icons, too: simple, and roughly the same size as the traditional RSS icon